Ravenous

Chapter 30

Alessandro stared at the empty air where the portal had been. Geneva was gone. So were the guardsmen, the changelings, and Macmillan.

And so was Holly. A long moment of disconnection passed. This can't be real. "What the hell just happened?" he asked Omara.

"Your little witch defeated the demon and closed the portal," Omara replied, her voice softened with amazement. "I would not have believed it, but she was stronger than her ancestor. In the end there was no need for The Book of Lies."

Alessandro was barely listening. Panic and loss finally caught up. He couldn't sense Holly anywhere. He clutched his side, as if the changeling's knife wound were the same as the one draining his heart. "But where did she go?"

"I don't know. Where did any of them go?" The queen sounded exhausted. She looked around, her shoulders uncharacteristically slumped. "Where did the book go? I want it back."

Alessandro's eyes automatically sought out the wolves. Perry was there, patches of fur torn from his coat, but he was safe. Others of his pack lay still and cold on the grass, returned to their human form in death. A strange hush permeated the field.

His own loss dulled the scene. It felt like a newscast, something happening to someone else far away. So tired. I wish I could just lie down.

The eerie silence made the rumble of a high-end ignition in the nearest parking lot all the more audible. A dozen heads turned in that direction.

"It's Pierce," said Alessandro. He knew the purr of that high-end motor.

"Pierce?" Omara looked at him, her eyes wide.

Tires squealed as the car sped toward the lot entrance.

She doesn't know. Unbelievable. "He opened the portal. He had the book. I would lay good money he was your thief. If he shared your bed, he had access to your home."

Omara recoiled, that blow the hardest of the night. "John!"

Hands fisted, clenched tight to her breast, she spun in a circle, a gesture of agony and rage. The rags of her dress swirled in her wake, exclamations of all the bitter hurt Alessandro knew she throttled inside.

"Traitor," she said, quietly this time. "Traitor. I protected him. I refused to hear ill of him!"

Pierce turned onto the exit road, the big motor thrumming its acceleration. There were others watching the scene, hounds and vampires, weary but game for one more kill.

"Get him," she cried. "Bring him down!" She exploded into the air, silks trailing like broken feathers. Hounds, wolves, vampires boiled after her, a dark, angry river of retribution.

Alessandro stayed where he was. He was hurt. There was no way he could catch up to that car. Neither could Omara. She landed a little way off, crumpling to the grass, spent. The hounds and wolves streamed past her. This hunt didn't need a leader. They had caught the scent of blind vengeance and could follow it well enough on their own.

Someone would pay for their losses that night. Pierce would do.

Alessandro flew to where the queen huddled, her head in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking, but he had no urge to comfort her. In so many ways she had caused it all.

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, stopping the tears by force. Queens didn't cry. "Why?"

Because you toyed with him when he wasn't strong enough to fight back. Because you showed him his weakness and then rubbed his face in it. Because when he thought all was lost, you gave him a treat and started the game over. I know, because for centuries that was me—except I never gave in.

But Alessandro said nothing. If he tried to answer her question, he wouldn't know where to begin, and he was too tired. Instead he told her what she wanted to hear. "Don't worry; they'll get him."

Omara sniffed. Her face was dry, only the brightness in her eyes betraying emotion. "We have to clean up and get out of here. The fey can't hold the humans off forever."

Alessandro helped her to her feet. "Your throne is safe. Do what you must. I have to find Holly."

The queen opened her mouth to reply, but her cell rang. She flipped it open. "Omara."

Alessandro watched as new interest filled her eyes. "What is it?"

She closed the phone, gave him a look that was at once hard and yet full of pity. "That was the hellhound Lore. There's hope. We may have a clue to what became of your witch."

As the fey relaxed their cordon, police swarmed to the area, responding to reports of lights and noise. Cop cars flashed like blue and red beacons. Their search would find nothing, but, for Alessandro and Omara, avoiding the roadblocks made progress frustratingly slow.

Eventually they parked at the mouth of a narrow, grimy alley that ran behind the abandoned Empire Hotel. It was downtown, close to the university and not far from Alessandro's apartment. Much of the paranormal community lived and worked in the area, earning the neighborhood the reputation of a ghetto in the making.

The alley had wrought-iron gates, but the padlock was broken. A few feet inside the entry Lore was waiting, leaning against the brick wall. Impassive, he gave Omara a polite nod of greeting. Hellhounds did not bow.

The narrow passage looked as old as Fairview, paved with sagging blocks of cedar. Tiny windows punched through the blackened brick walls, but none were lit. The back door of a Chinese restaurant stood open far down the passageway. Alessandro could smell it, heavy with the stench of human food. Lore beckoned, leading them into the alley.

"The witch made this."

The hellhound stopped before an arched wooden door that was reinforced with black iron straps. The center of the arch was perhaps nine feet high, thick planks of weathered oak arranged vertically. A heavy bolt secured it from the outside. It looked like something out of a children's illustrated fairy tale.

"She made a doorway to the Castle." Lore's voice was full of reverence. "She made freedom possible."

Alessandro closed his eyes, his wound pulsing with new pain as his heart pounded with love and fear. What did it cost her to do this? What happened to her?

"What's the door doing here in the alley? How do you know it leads to the Castle?" Omara asked.

Lore gestured to two of his men, who were waiting farther down the alley. "My hounds were chasing the ghouls. They saw a terrible flash of light over this alleyway and felt the rush of power in the air. The hounds came here, with the fey, to investigate and to keep the humans from walking into danger. All they found was this door. The fey knew it for what it was. They said spells like this settle where they please. The door found this place to its liking."

Lore touched the wood. "I can feel the Castle behind it. It calls like old, bad dreams." He dropped his hand, stepping away as if repulsed. "I have nightmares enough."

"We thank you for your aid," Omara said after a long moment. "You have done more than enough. Go tend to your wounded."

Lore nodded and left, the other hounds at his heels.

Alessandro crossed to the door, putting one hand flat against the wood. Loss of blood slowed his limbs, adding weight to every step he took, but he ignored the weakness. He had kept going so far. He could go on awhile longer.

Omara watched, saying nothing.

He slid his hand down the wood, feeling its roughness. A long existence had inured him to fear, yet the Castle, as Lore had put it, was like old, bad dreams. It was a hell built for the vampires and the wolves, the dragons, the demons, and the fey, made for their eternal imprisonment. Made to keep his kind trapped forever. The guardsmen were mad and merciless. Holly had made a door, but who was to say that it would work from the inside?

Holly had disappeared. Logic said she was in the Castle, perhaps lost or hurt or worse. He touched the cold iron strapping, the metal dented as if from a blacksmith's hammer. Anxiety pounded like a full-body migraine. Alessandro drew the bolt. It slid without resistance.

Omara broke her silence. "I forbid it!" she snapped. "You need to rest. You'll bleed into insensibility and lie there like a great idiot until a guardsman trips over you."

The door swung out on massive hinges that gave a sighing groan.

"Alessandro!" Omara cried, her voice sliding from command to entreaty.

"I'm sure you'd be happy enough to see me if you were the one trapped inside."

He walked into hell.

When Holly awoke she was sprawled on a cold floor of stone. The chill went bone-deep, the air around her clinging with damp. The light was faint, but enough for her to see that the wall in front of her eyes was stone, too. Where ami?

She jumped to her feet, then fell against the wall, dizzy. She'd moved too fast. She felt sick, spent. Almost hungover. But she was unhurt and alone. For the first time in days no one was trying to bite her. Sluggishly, memory flowed back.

Sweet Hecate, I'm inside the Castle. Holly looked around. She'd tried to make the portal into a doorway, but there was no doorway in sight. I could have been thrown. Someone could have brought me here. It might not have worked at all, and I'm trapped.

Holly looked beyond the presence or absence of a door. What she saw wasn't reassuring. The picture in Grandma's book was pretty accurate. The Castle was a wilderness of gray stone. Torches set into the walls threw smears of smoky light, but the glow died within feet of the flames.

Every few hundred feet, passageways intersected the hall where she stood, regular and endless. Holly walked to the nearest corner, cautiously peering around its edge. The new passageway looked much like the last, its ceiling hidden in a fog of shifting shadow.

Movement. A few hundred feet away two guardsmen herded a cluster of changelings, swords and whips at the ready. They crossed the hallway, following yet another passage deep into the Castle's maze. Holly pulled back, afraid she would be seen. Prisoners from the battle?

She turned the other way and nearly walked straight into the guardsman with the braid—the same one she had seen in the Flanders house. He had a thing on a chain that was probably a wolf, but looked as big as a bear.

The wolf looked as crazed and brutal as the man.

"Hi," she said stupidly. She reached for magic, but there was nothing there.

Holly spun and took off down the nearest side corridor, lungs burning as she gulped the musty, damp air. She heard the rattle of a chain, and the guardsman released the wolf, shouting something in a tongue she didn't know. The wolf lolloped after, his juggernaut form crashing into corners whenever his bulk refused to turn quickly. The Castle, solid stone, didn't even quiver.

The only thing in Holly's favor was a head start. Using one hand as a brace, she swung around a corner, then raced off in a new direction. She was utterly lost. The wolf's panting echoed behind her, gusting as if there were fifty beasts hurtling along the corridors. Claws scraped as he moved, the sound like the drag of chalk on slate.

Cold stone smacked against Holly's sneakers, hard even through the cushioned soles. If she could find a room, some doorway too small for the wolf to pass through, she would be safe.

Before her she could see the foot of a stairway. The light barely touched it, showing only a few horizontal edges highlighted against the prevailing murk. She hurtled up the stairs, using hands as well as feet.

Her fingers slipped on slime—some mold that grew in the dark, or else the trail of something she did not care to meet. Shuddering, she pulled her hands away and tried to ignore the slick sensation beneath her running feet.

The stairway was steep, going up and up an irregular slope. At the top of the stairs she froze, counting on the darkness to hide her. Slowly, careful of the long drop at her feet, she turned and looked down, her stomach cold.

The wolf was nosing the bottom step as if it wasn't sure it wanted to make the effort to climb. From Holly's vantage point he was a shapeless mass of dark brown fur, his head a matted wedge. He put one massive paw on the bottom step, and she could hear the clack of the scythe-sharp claws over his wet, slurping snuffle.

Surely a wolf could smell my trail? Maybe it was a wolf with a sinus disorder. Maybe it was senile. Silence might save her, make it forget she was there.

She barely dared to breathe. Behind her, in the unseen tunnel, she could hear the distant moaning of wind. Grit and dust sifted over her toes, blown by an errant gust of air.

Holly's gaze stayed locked on the wolf. He lifted his head, looking from side to side and making a doggy whine of boredom. She dared let a tendril of hope unfurl in her breast.

Then some thing crawled over Holly's foot. Instinctively she flicked it away. The infinitesimal scritch of the creature's carapace hitting the stone floor was enough. Ears pricked. The wolf's eyes, crimson as sin, looked up into hers. Hecate!

Spinning, Holly resumed her flight, shadows and puddles of torchlight mottling the long hall. The passageway angled, breaking her line of sight. There were rooms branching off the passage, and she was running out of strength.

Holly ducked into a large room on her left, curling into the darkest corner. Here the movement of air gave the impression of a high ceiling. It almost smelled fresh.

Then it smelled like wolf. Two eyes like red coals peered through the door.

"Viktor!" bellowed healthy male lungs. The echo bounced through the stone halls.

The wolf whined, backing away.

"Viktor!"

The wolf barked, a deep, hair-raising woof. With a scrabble of nails on stone, the thing lolloped away to answer its master's voice.

Holly slid up the wall, trembling. Something brushed her cheek and she jumped, barely stifling a squeak. She slapped at it, finally realizing it was only cloth. Her foot sank into something soft, and she bent to touch it. Carpet.

This was no prisoner's cell.

Alessandro prowled the stone corridors, sword drawn. He was growing weaker, blackness edging his vision. Omara was right: He was pushing his endurance to a foolish degree, but he could feel Holly's presence now. The blood bond between them had been erased by the sheer volume of power she had channeled, but a connection remained. He knew where she was as surely as the ocean felt the pull of the moon.

However, knowing where she was and getting there were two different things. The Castle was a maze filled with unpleasant surprises, some of them large and furry.

Others told dire stories. He found The Book of Lies, the cover bloodied and torn, lying abandoned in one passageway. If Pierce drove away from the campus, how did the book get here? Who had taken it? There was no way to know. Alessandro picked it up. It could well be their ticket out of the Castle.

And then, an hour into his search, he discovered a woman's body, facedown. From the camouflage pattern on the outfit and the long fair hair, he knew it was Geneva.

He crept up on her slowly, unwilling to make any assumptions. There was no heartbeat, no respiration, but then demons were smoke and energy. They didn't need to breathe.

He drew close enough to nudge her gently with the tip of his sword.

Nothing. He placed his sword down close at hand and knelt by her, feeling a strange familiarity with the scene. Her human form was young and pretty. The long hair fell around her like a wreath of silk, glimmering in the torchlight. Tentatively he put his fingers against the skin of her neck.

She was cold, as cold as his own bloodless hands, and she smelled all wrong. Startled, he rolled her to her back. The corpse fell with the limpness of the recently dead. He stared.

Shock numbed his face. She is human!

She had been restored to her original living state. The powerful collision between the portal and Holly's earth magic had purified even Geneva.

For what good it had done her. A changeling's bite crimsoned her throat. She had probably been killed before she even had a chance to realize what had happened to her.

Blond and pretty, Geneva was the last of the Fairview murders, felled by the very creatures that had murdered to summon her. She even had an Orpheus token in one hand.